Arts Council England admit to a mistake

There were 1,333 applications for Arts Council England (ACE)money this year and 695 winners. Except we can now make that 696 after ACE admitted – get ready – that it made a mistake.

Homotopia, the Liverpool-based gay, lesbian and transgender arts organisation, has been told it will receive £70,000 a year until 2015, after a complaint it made was upheld.

Keen-eyed readers might recall that appeals against refusal were not allowed, but a spokeswoman for ACE told the Diary there was a complaints process when arts organisations felt it had not followed its own procedures: "We wanted to make sure we were absolutely fair."

It received 28 complaints and decided that three should be reassessed, including Homotopia, which had initially been ruled ineligible because it did not have a business model. Homotopia successfully argued that they would have all their business structures in place by 2012 and became the only one of the three to get money. "We looked at it and we said yes, we think they are good," added the spokeswoman.

The group's director, Gary Everett, said he was delighted. Homotopia, set up in 2004, has gone, he said, from being a local arts festival to being "an organisation delivering a national and international programme of arts, social justice and education initiatives 365 days a year."

The writer, Laurence Lynch, an inveterate Soho bar hanger-outer, told me that he wrote the play 10 years ago. "The thing is, when you don't have any experience or outlet you write in a vacuum. I was insecure about it. But I thought it was a story that really needed to be told."

Fast-forward, and Lynch is finally seeing it on stage, thanks to the theatre he fitted the showers for and Hamish McAlpine, the founder of Tartan Films, who has co-produced. "It is a bit like a dream that it's happening. I am a plumber."

Tate: home of underlining

This is the Diary. The home of arts diary stories. Like it? We were inspired by Tate Britain's new logo on its latest exhibition invite. It reads: This is Britain. The Home of British Art.

It stems from a successful "This is Britain" poster campaign in the spring, and the words look set to be used more widely. We like it, even if it does sound a bit shouty. It conjures up images of the gallery's director stepping out on to the Millbank steps to declare, Braveheart-style: "I am Penelope Curtis and … This. Is. Britain. The home of British art!" Perhaps that's next.

Run for your self-respect

It is 2011, isn't it? The Diary only asks because it has just been announced that filming has started on a movie version of Ray Cooney's trouser-dropping farce, Run for Your Wife. It will star Danny Dyer, Neil Morrissey and Denise van Outen, with Cooney himself directing. But not just that, oh no, there's more. There will be appearances from Lionel Blair, Christopher Biggins, Cliff Richard "and many, many more". The sad thing is that the Diary will most likely go and watch it, and probably quite enjoy it.